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Cheap compact digital camera help?

JTC

JTC

PFM Villager...
Hi folks.

A friend wants to buy a digital camera including a memory card, with a budget of up to £170. She asked me to help point her in the right direction, but in fairness I'm not up-to-date on what's good and what's not in digicams (last time I went into a camera shop was around 3 years ago).

She once asked me for advice on a film camera (for her year abroad) and I managed to persuade her to get a decent non-zoom compact (Olympus I think it was) which she loves but apparently it has finally given up the ghost...

So, I'm wondering about something similar - good lens, decent resolution, standard operation (i.e. MUST have an optical viewfinder) and it would help if it's fairly sturdy as I reckon she's fairly rough on her cameras.

Oh, and she wants to buy it on Wednesday and it has to be from Jessops... so a quick spod brings up the Olympus Mju 600, which looks decent but is a zoom digicam and I wondered if there's a non-zoom version?

Any advice for me so that I can advise her (it is me recommending the non-zoom approach, though if all else fails a zoom will have to do)...

Ta,

john
 
I went for the Sony W30 - or W50 if she wants a bigger screen (it's the only difference between them).

It has 6 megapixels
Optical Viewfinder
OK lens
and the shortest shutter lag of a camera in that price range. I have one and it works very well. Nothing really bothered me other than that whole press the button wait, wait, wait there it is, type deal you get with digicams the W30 has none of that. It takes good quality pics.




J
 
That'll do for her. Are the proprietry Sony memory sticks expensive? She'll want to have perhaps a 256Mb or 512Mb one, and that might tip her over budget (though she can afford it I reckon, being a teacher an' all... ;-)
 
I think they are OK - I got a 512 and the camera for about 150 on line - Jessops will be more expensive - The W30 is discontinued now so its the W35 she'll need.
 
For the meMOry card, if you can't get a bundle price, then they're often much cheaper online. I've used play.com lately and they've been very well priced.
 
Hey John,
why doesn't your friend do what i did; ask all of the resident experts and get some sound advice off them, then agonise for ages over which Compact to buy and where to buy it ( Here or overseas ) within my budget of upto £300, then go out and buy a DSLR bundle for £450 and a posh prime lens ( to make it more compact size) for £240, Total outlay £690 'and' i don't even know how to use the bugger properly yet - see it all on e-bay soon.... (sometimes i need my frigging head looking at.....:rolleyes:, but sod it, you only live once...:) )
 
Sid and Coke said:
Hey John,
why doesn't your friend do what i did; ask all of the resident experts and get some sound advice off them, then agonise for ages over which Compact to buy and where to buy it ( Here or overseas ) within my budget of upto £300, then go out and buy a DSLR bundle for £450 and a posh prime lens ( to make it more compact size) for £240, Total outlay £690 'and' i don't even know how to use the bugger properly yet - see it all on e-bay soon.... (sometimes i need my frigging head looking at.....:rolleyes:, but sod it, you only live once...:) )
Click to expand...


But you have enjoyed the buying process, haven't you?;) Yes, you only live once, why not try something you want to?

A few years ago, I was in the same boat looking for a good digital camera. I ended up buying a Canon Pro 1. I haven't used it much, indeed I tend to use my cheaper Panasonic point & shoot 5M pixel more. But I like the idea of owning a prosumer camera like the Pro 1.

Follow the heart, not the brain.;)
 
I have a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ1 that I bought from Jessops a year ago.

It was bought as my first digital, a cheap way to get started. I have been very happy with it; it went on holiday with me to the subantarctic islands, I got some great shots. It has a fairly wide range optical zoom.

The main criticisms I would make are the usual 3:
1) No viewfinder, only screen, so can be hard to use in very bright conditions.
2) Shutter lag - common problem in cheapies, I understand.
3) If you look carefully, you can see there is a tiny bit of vignetting when zoomed right out. I assembled a group of landscape shots into a big panorama, and had to put in small corrections - the extreme corners are about 8% darker than the image centre.

Memory (at least the nonproprietary types like SD) is so cheap that you can just buy it as you need it; we bought a couple of cards while we were away.
 
Sid and Coke said:
Hey John,
why doesn't your friend do what i did; ask all of the resident experts and get some sound advice off them, then agonise for ages over which Compact to buy and where to buy it ( Here or overseas ) within my budget of upto £300, then go out and buy a DSLR bundle for £450 and a posh prime lens ( to make it more compact size) for £240, Total outlay £690 'and' i don't even know how to use the bugger properly yet - see it all on e-bay soon.... (sometimes i need my frigging head looking at.....:rolleyes:, but sod it, you only live once...:) )
Click to expand...

haha! What did you go for Sid? How are you getting on with it?
 
dan m said:
S&C - did you get that pancake 40?
Click to expand...

I've actaully bought 2 of them now, online, well i thought i had. Then i get an e-mail saying sorry this item is out of stock, we expect delivery within 28 days , we will keep your order live until then , please contact us if you wish to cancel.
So far i've had to send out two e-mails saying please cancel my order, please remove all of my details from your database, don't spam me, and thank you for wasting my time, bastards. ( I only thought Bastards, i didn't say that to them :) ) .

hifienthusiast said:
But you have enjoyed the buying process, haven't you?;) Yes, you only live once, why not try something you want to?
Click to expand...

Yeah , that feeling of finally making a decision, then handing over the cash, but then when i get home looking at a box and thinking , did i really need to spend £450 on a camera, that i don't actually know how to use. doubt is creeping in, maybe i need to get out an start snapping :)

MO! said:
haha! What did you go for Sid? How are you getting on with it?
Click to expand...

Don't MO! , the wifey knew about the DSLR as i had to raid our joint savings account to pay cash for it, I've hidden the extra lens on my plastic and will pay it off over the next month, an overtime shift would come in handy right now :)

The total package was a GX-1L with 18 -55 and 50 -200 kit lenses, a lowpro bag to put it all in and a 1Gb SD card, plus (hopefully) a Pentax 40mm 2.8 DA limited lens, which is only 15mm long, making the camera really quite compact for a DSLR. I keep getting messed about over this lens though, I find it in an online shop, fill all of my details out, buy it, then they send a mail saying very sorry but this item is out of stock at the moment with a 28 day lead time. So i might just give up and just stick with what I've got. My idea was to learn on the fixed Prime lens, then start fiddling about with zooms later when I have more idea what i'm doing. The size of the 40mm Pancake lens appealed as I'll be more inclined to take the camera out and about with me, not being used to an SLR camera , it still feels a little bulky to me, even though its one of the smallest and lightest.

According to stuff I've read on the internet ( lots and lots ...), the GX-1L is (apparently) exactly the same machine as the Pentax *IST -DL2 and when directly comparing picures and spec sheets of the two cameras this seems to be the case. I was going to go for the Nikon D40 , but at the same price and with roughly the same spec the extra 50-200mm zoom of the Samsung package did it for me.
I've not found a bad review of either the Samsung GX-1L or the Pentax *IST-DL2 , and as I'm a photography beginner/numpty I had to go with what i can read, not what i know...


I was actually looking at compact Camera's today in my local Asda, the compacts these days look like small Hi-Tech jewels. I liked the look of all of them but the Olympus u700 and any of the Sony Cybershots looked really neat.
You can get an awfu lot for £150, maybe i should have done this myself, i don't half complicate things sometimes.

Sorry for the hijack John, you know i talk too much, ;) .
 
There is certainly something to be said for having a camera that will slip into a pocket without fuss, and that you can carry wherever. However I've not regretted buying my Pentax DS one jot. As you say S&C - just get out there and take some pics with the lenses you have - I'd leave the 50-200 at home for the time being and just sling the camera over your shoulder with the 18-55 on it when you're out walking the dog or whatever.

With camera phones improving (see Mike S's shots with his Sony K800), I'm tempted to skip the compact digicam route and just have something like that in my pocket "just in case".
 
I'd take a look at dpreview.com.

I've always bought Canon cameras and never regretted it. Just bought a an Ixus 800IS to replace my aging (and now seemingly enourmous!) Ixus 300. Great camera - x4 optical zoom, image stabilisation, great build quality and even takes nice snaps but it's probably nearer £180ish.

And yes, I've a DSLR that I also love. But I very rarely fancy lugging it around when I'm doing the tourist thing and there's no way it's coming with me on a night out. You need a pocket sized point-and-shoot as well.
 
Why buy a point and shoot camera when you can get this kind of quality from the latest generation of mobile phones? (Nokia N95 - 5mp)

02N95.jpg


01N95.jpg
 
That's very impressive -- I didn't know the N95 was actually available yet. Is it as thick as it's rumoured to be?

Pass the black pepper grinder...
 
You can't assess much from such a small image however. Plus, does it have a usable flash, decent lens, etc.?
 
My mouth was watering when i saw that picture last night, Fantastic.
My Fuji compact camera is about 4+ years old now and there is hardly a mark on it. I bought a decent Samsonite 'Trekking' case for it the day i bought it and never leave it out of the case when not in use.
My mobile phone ( provided and paid for by my employers) on the other hand has been dropped from heights of upto 25 feet (on at least two occasions) in the last year and has spent many and hour gettig jiggled about in my tool box. Luckily it is one of them Nokia ones in a sporty rubber case, a normal 'Posh' phone would last me about a month or two at the most , before I had to get onto the accounts dept to buy me another one...
I treat Camera's like jewels and mobile phones like the annoying, but essential tools of the devil that they are...
 
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